Is AI Making You Dumber? The Risks of Delegating Your Thinking | Margaret Floyd Barry | Ep 100

Your thinking process has now been delegated to the machine. We cannot pretend that it is not insanely powerful. I don't think it's gonna be free for very long.

It pays them to be free because they need more data. This is not theory. This is happening right now.

If it's just about information, we'd all be magically healed.

Many of us are struggling to even articulate what's going on, but there is a huge, huge modern reality That is challenging everything that's come before it. It's challenging our ideas of the future. It's challenging our ideas of of the present. It's it's literally potentially going to affect our biology down the road, and it's AI. And I thought since you are dealing with this head on with your own business because health practitioners and health programs are suffering across the board. I just thought, let's have Margaret come on. Let's talk about this. And let's just have that discussion because it's affecting all of us. It's in— it's— it's— we're just not really talking about it in the way I hope we're going to dig into. Because most people are talking about it as like a, hey, I'm getting more shit done. You know, I'm like, it's so cool. But like, there's a bigger red flag, I think, that you and I talk about all the time. And that's what I'm hoping we can dig in a little bit today.

I think I agree. And I think that we are not the only ones grappling with this. I think everybody is grappling with it. When I open up my email in the morning, when I see the number of thinkers and writers who are like, what does this mean for who we are? Everyone's trying to find their place in this and how to harness the incredible potential of AI. We cannot pretend that it is not insanely powerful, but how do we do that in a way that allows us to stay human and stay, I think what you're speaking to is this like lack of connection and community, right? That we're all longing for. The more that we, the more time we spend on our devices, the more learning is remote, the more workforces are remote. You know, I was just talking to our daughter's friend whose mom works from home and I was asking her, did she always work from home or is this something that's happened post-COVID? Oh, post-COVID. And I think, you know, those, I mean, there's so many blessings to being able to work from home. Both of us do. And we miss those, you know, water cooler moments.

Yeah.

You know, the office politics and the going out for lunch with colleagues and like all that kind of thing. The sense of community, it really, and that human touch is something that in this world of digitalness, and now you add AI into this, we have to be so intentional and proactive about creating that and thinking about those connections. 'Cause I think we're all longing for it. We're desperate for it.

To me, AI is equivalent to the way we look at fire. Getting access and control of fire back in the day completely changed our biology. It changed everything. And I think that AI is honestly no different. I think it's going to be that thing that changes not only the things we're seeing now, but things that we can't see right now that are so much deeper and potentially even darker than we even can imagine. And not to You know, be glass half empty. But let's talk about how AI is threatening our humanity and uniqueness. I feel like it's watering down not only our intelligence, but it's also watering down the content and the information and the expertise that many people For lack of a better way of saying it, used to have.

If we think about the difference between AI and search, and I know particularly in the early days, I think a lot of people erroneously used AI as just really fancy search, right? And it's very different from search. Think about what pure search was, and I'm talking about Google before Google integrated AI. Think about what that was. You went and you asked for the Grand Query, you asked a question, you wanted to look up some information. And it served you back a whole bunch of things that you had to then go read, think about, sort through what's relevant, right? Like, you retained the critical analysis. You were the one who had the final say. Yes, it would weight things with the algorithm. You know, it would give you certain responses that are more weighted than others, but you are still the one who's clicking through and doing the finding and the analysis and coming up to your conclusions, whether that's how, what's the best flight to Paris, or whether it's learning, you know, about how estrogen is metabolized. I mean, whatever it is, you're still the one who is making those conclusions.

And to your point, you would usually open up 3 browsers or 3 tabs and you would read 3 different perspectives on it.

You would do that critical thinking. It's a lot like, you know, back in the day when we had to like write essays and you'd go to the library and you'd go through the card catalog and you'd pick the books and you'd read through the books and then you'd think about it and you'd do the consolidation. It's really interesting. The more I think about AI, the more I have an appreciation for essay writing that we used to all hate back in high school. But I feel like, oh wow, do I hope our kids don't lose that skill. So the next, what AI does that's so different is it actually does all the opening and thinking and reading and analysis for you and hands you back this tidy little answer. So all of a sudden, your thinking process has now been delegated to the machine. And if I'm looking for the cheapest and fastest flight to Paris, as just a stupid example, okay, fine. I'm not losing anything by that. But if I'm delegating my learning, then it starts to become a little bit more problematic. Or I'm just making, like, I'm making a whole lot of assumptions about what that AI, how it's thinking, how it's considering things, what it's weighing, biases, all of these components. I have this sort of global assumption and just trust when I'm handing over all of that responsibility to basically the machine. Certainly it saves time, but it's also, it just opens up a whole other level of risk when we delegate thought to the machine in that way.

Before even going to health, like what's the risk around just our thinking?

Well, a few things. I think back to the very early days of AI, I actually interviewed someone and I so wish I forgot, I cannot find his name. Anyways, he was one of the very early AI adopters and I had him come and do a talk for our practitioner community, and he was explaining AI as this really, really, really, really, really good intern who has read everything on the internet, has access to everything, has sort of listened in on every single conversation, and who basically never gets tired, doesn't get offended, will do anything you want, and desperately wants to please you. And I think that's a really good analogy because all of that sounds fantastic, and there's so many risks also embedded in that. So yes, It's a really, really, really good intern that never gets tired. It's basically free and doesn't take things personally. Great. It really wants to please you. Well, that's actually nice. It's validating, but it can be problematic because that already is skewing things. That doesn't lead to objectivity if it's trying to please you. Search isn't trying to please you. Annoyingly, we know how much search isn't trying to please you because you could be looking for something and you wish it could step inside your brain and find the thing that you're looking for, but that's why it would take several, many many iterations sometimes to get to what it was you were looking for because it's a lot more neutral. So, the fact that it wants to please you, that's a first area of risk. Next thing is that we have this assumption that it has access to everything equally, and that's not actually the case, especially when we're talking about things that start to step outside the conventional accepted, right? There's different digital footprints. If you are dealing, for example, in health, We know that there is new data, there's new research coming out all the time, and particularly folks dealing in the functional world, oftentimes, we are doing things that are actually significantly outside the norm, where there's not as much of a digital footprint, because it is just by nature, it's newer. And so, those aren't going to be the things that are considered as much, or if you're trying to challenge something that is more considered the norm, there's not going to be the same kind of digital footprint, or you might get a bias actually against that thing. So it feels like it's so neutral, but it's actually really not. And we have to remember that it is not getting access to all information equally. It's, there's going to be, it's called digital knowledge bias, I think. I'd have to look it up. I have it in my talk that I'm giving, but there's an actual digital coverage bias. It's these, it's this actual bias that is built in based on what there is more of a digital footprint to support, which when we're talking about things that are sort challenging norms and status quo, there's necessarily not going to be as much of that.

What happens when we're not the ones doing the critical thinking and we're relying on the AI to do it?

I think there's a few things. I have some litmus tests that I like to run things past to make sure that having AI as a thought partner can be very powerful as long as a few key things are there. Number one, you can catch it if it's wrong. That's a really, really important piece of the puzzle. If you're delegating your critical thinking to something that you cannot catch if it's wrong, and I'll give you a really clear example. I'm not a lawyer and I sometimes have to deal with like contracts and legal stuff. And sure, I can throw that stuff into Chat or into Claude and it can help me navigate things. But my gosh, can I not let that replace an actual lawyer? Because I have no idea how to catch it when it's wrong, which we know it is, right? Because when you are an expert in something and you are using AI, You catch all the little nuances. They're subtle, but they're there when you're like, ah, yes, it almost got it, but there's this little piece. But if you don't have the expertise to catch it, this is when it gets really risky. That's one big piece. Another thing is that, you know, one of the, I think the thing that you're speaking to is this idea, not just of the critical thinking, but of generative writing. AI-generated writing, which is in many, many occasions, it's kind of the first place a lot of us play with it. It's like, you know, Explain to me, you know, longevity medicine in a way that a 5th grader could understand, you know, or like write this email for me, or, you know, write, you know, people who are using it to write their books.

Their presentations, their menus. Yeah, we're seeing it everywhere.

All sorts of things. I mean, I remember we were sitting in a restaurant one day for lunch as a family, and I look up and I'm like, oh wow, they used AI to write their manifesto, 'cause there's some very, very clear giveaways and tells in terms of how AI structures things, certain sentence structures, And things that unless you have like really trained your AI to break those habits, um, it, it's going to do.

I have a gift for you. It's called the Freedom Meats Guide, and it's all about reclaiming your health, eating the most nutrient-dense traditional foods, bone broth, organ meats, raw milk, and more. See, these are the foods that built strong and resilient people for generations, and this guide will help bring them back into your life. Whether you're just starting out or you're deep into ancestral lifestyle, This is the roadmap, and all 24 pages of it are available for download for free via the link in the description. Look, start feeding your body what it really needs. You deserve it.

One of the things that's really fascinating, I think this is what you're speaking to, is there is a journal, Organizational Science, where they were looking at the readability. So like the unders— how you can understand and comprehension of of writing, and they noticed a massive uptick in the number of journal submissions. But what they noticed is that a huge, significant percentage of those, especially if there had been AI involved in the writing, they weren't even getting to the stage where they were going for peer review. Like, they were sort of desk rejecting a huge number of them, far more than when they were just human written. And it was, they actually did this retroactively. So it wasn't like they knew this coming in. It wasn't that the people who were making the decision of whether to send it for peer peer review or to desk reject it had any idea which ones had AI or not. They were just doing it based on their ability to comprehend. And what's happening is it's actually taking the reviewers far longer to get through things, not just because of the increase in volume, but because of the significant decrease in quality. All of us have read AI writing and we all know this experience. You read the words and they're English and they sound good and they sort of make sense, But they also kind of say nothing at the same time, right? Like, there's all sorts of fluff. We experienced this in our own school. So at the Institute of Restorative Health, we have a great faculty of very, very seasoned clinicians, and we were testing an AI. We had trained this AI on the sort of institutional mind, all of our curriculum. It sort of listened into every webinar, every transcript, all the things. And we were so excited about this, thinking that this was going to really help the instructors and kind of offload them in answering things like forum questions and whatnot. And what was so interesting is that when they used AI to answer these questions, the answers, I mean, they were long, they were convoluted, they were giving all this context and new, like, sort of caveats and stuff, but they never answered the actual questions. And the, you know, the quality dropped massively. And we actually had to put in all these rules for our faculty to be like, no, no, no. Like, you can go to AI as like a second check just to make sure you didn't miss out on something important. But what AI couldn't do, I mean, it had access to all the same information theoretically, but it doesn't have their clinical experience of applying this information with real humans. It doesn't have their lived experience of being a student themselves. It doesn't have their lived experience of being an instructor and knowing how to answer a student's question so that they get what they need without all the extra fluff. So it's like, yes, the information is there, but the discernment, the critical thinking, the nuance, the application was totally missing. So the quality dropped massively when you delegated that to AI. And now we have very strict rules that none of our faculty use the AI in that way at all.

One of the ways they're using AI, particularly around their health, is let's say they're getting tested. Well, there's two ways, right? So there, there one way is they're plugging in some influencer or some doctor's name and they're saying, think like, you know, Mark Hyman and give me a diet, or think like X trainer and tell me how to work out. So they're doing that. The other way they're doing is they're getting their testing done and then they're Putting it in AI to evaluate. Now, that's what you're seeing a lot. And what is— what's the advantage of that? And then what's the disadvantage?

If you know what you're doing, it goes back to expertise again. If you're a practitioner and you really understand the clinical nuance, being able to engage with AI like that to identify if there's maybe a little something that you're missing or a different way of looking at things. Again, You have the context, you are able to know if it's wrong or if this just doesn't make sense in the clinical context of the specific client that you're doing that for. I just have to give the major caveat, none of the major AIs are HIPAA certified. So if you are a practitioner, for the love of God, do not just upload your client's lab data. I don't think people are doing this, but just in case, I need to say that. It is really— and for yourself too, you know, you can take a screenshot of an element of it and upload. I would not just upload all of your labs. All of that is public. You don't want to do that. Okay. So the benefit is, if you are a practitioner, you really know what you're doing, it can help you think through nuance that you might not have considered, and it can kind of give you different perspectives and things, and it can be very helpful for troubleshooting. But again, it doesn't have that lived human experience, and so if you are an individual who doesn't have, you're not a practitioner, it's going to give you All sorts of recommendations. How do you know which ones are really relevant to you? How do you know, even if you have these long conversations with the AI, it really doesn't replace the human element. AI might be better at diagnosing certain things and what have you, but that is one small piece of the puzzle when it comes to healing. If it's just about information, We'd all be magically healed, right? I have a great example of this just with myself. So I'm an avid runner. I've been running since I was a teenager. I've worked with multiple coaches over the years. And as we've talked about here on the podcast before, I had a really bad knee injury a couple of years ago. And after I worked past the acute phase where I was going to a PT and getting, you know, very specific guidance on how to recover, once I'd moved out of that, I was at the gym lifting weights, doing all the things that I knew how to do. And I kept doing this back-to-run program. You remember this? programs that I had for myself, and I was working with chat and with my extensive history of running. It's not like I started running 2 years ago. I've been running since I was a teenager. Like, in many ways, I knew what I was doing. And what kind of progress did I make? None. I would run for a little bit and then like things would start to hurt and I'd have to pull back. And it was like start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. Sometimes I was starting from the beginning again. Sometimes I was just a little bit of a setback and pushing through. Finally, I realized I was doing exactly What I recommend to both my clients and practitioners not to do. I was delegating all of this to AI. So what did I do? I went out and I found a coach who specializes in helping people return to run post-injury, who could put his physical eyes on me, right? He could watch me run and see what I was doing. I started working out with a trainer at the gym who understands my goals, and all of a sudden, I'm making Real progress. I've got a race on the calendar, like things that were completely untenable. And in just a few months, the amount of progress I made when I had real humans guiding this process versus when I was delegating to AI and my own expertise, it was just— it's a completely different world. And I did kind of know what I was doing with the running. So when we make these assumptions that AI can, you know, figure out I mean, sure, maybe it can help you with a meal plan, but even there, I've had AI tell me that 2 eggs are gonna give me like 30 grams of protein. In my wildest dreams will 2 eggs give me 30 grams of protein, right? Like, it's just not gonna happen. And so, you know, you need to be able to have the filter of when is it wrong? And that human element is so vitally important. I mean, there's just having somebody sit with you, hold space with you, and listen to you human to human. Sets off an entirely different cascade of immune messengers, they're called cytokines, that are anti-inflammatory, that are pro-healing. So, when you pull that out of the equation and you're delegating that to a machine, there's whole components of the human-to-human connection, which is necessary for healing, that you're just erasing, and there's just no way that AI can reproduce that.

The whole connection piece that you're bringing up is already an issue. We've already been, you know, for what, almost a decade now due to social media, that's been the conversation at hand, right? Is, oh, we're all isolating, we're disconnected, we're focused on that black mirror. What I'm concerned about is, because I see this happening on the retail space, is we already had these kind of customer service automation happening, but now everyone is now switching it to AI. And I, I don't really see the biggest difference personally, that it's still basically putting up a wall between that human connection. Any of us that know better are still craving to talk to a person when you call customer service because you know that you can more efficiently get through your issue with said company if you could just talk to somebody.

And that is the biggest opportunity for every single one of us. That's the big— that's the opportunity is because everyone is going to the AI and to the bots. And to all of this, the opportunity to differentiate is to be human to human. At the school, we have always sent— when you register to study with us, you've always had your welcome email. And then Tiffany, who is our CEO, incredible. She's been with the company since before it was even an idea. So she knows this company inside and out, and she has always written a personal email. Hey, I'm Tiffany. I'm here. So she's done that human to human touch. Okay? Now, she physically picks up the phone and calls people. And if they don't answer, she leaves a voicemail and she texts them. And they're blown away because when do we get a phone call of somebody just reaching out to check in? Hey, we're so excited that you signed up. Do you have everything you need? Any questions? It's a human speaking to another human. And so, that's the opportunity that every single one of us has is the more the world goes in this direction of everything automated, talking with digital marketing folks, It is harder. Digital marketing, it's a brutal world out there right now because there's so much AI slop. Googles and Yahoos and all of these, they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're trying to keep slop out of your inbox. But that means you got to write your own emails. That means it's better to write an email that is human to human with errors in it than it is to generate some impersonal, bland, vanilla email, even if you have prompted, even if you have trained your agent to do all the things. You're going to get a better result if you actually speak as a human to another human.

But yet the industry is suffering. So there's, there's a differentiator happening, but then there's also, I mean, there's a real fear. I mean, jobs seem to be going away. Um, centers are closing. This is so real. For many people, this is not theory. This is happening right now.

Happening right now, 100%.

What's the mind shift that has to happen in us, the users? I'm not talking about the health practitioners, but the users, because that's what's going to determine the future is how we interact with AI, how we utilize this tech. That's where we have to make the shift. And one thing, and I think taking from what you're saying, is that we cannot use AI as an absolute. We cannot pretend that it is the last step.

Well, I think it can be an incredible tool. I think we're all feeling the pain because we're all just getting used to this brave new world, right? And we have this incredible toy that is still free. I don't think it's gonna be free for very long. Like, I feel like we're gonna be, I don't know what the, how it's going to all look, but you think of like how back in the early days before Facebook monetized and we didn't have ads and you could, I remember, I mean, this is, Way in my early days of Eat Naked, I had a business page, a community page that had thousands of people, and anything I posted got put in front of those people. It was just like, oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. And then all of a sudden it was like algorithm changed, algorithm changed, tighter controls, tighter controls. And now we are like owned by the social media companies.

Well, and remember it, remember it's free initially because they're trying to build their numbers. They're trying to build the data, right? And for AI right now, It pays them to be free because they need more data. And so we are, in a sense, you know, the future that we're almost in a sense complaining about or concerned about is the one we're co-creating.

Yeah, well, 100%. So we need to all be mindful of that, and we know that that's all going to change. I just think it's a little bit like, you know, you need to vote with your dollars, you know, when you go to the grocery store and you buy organic if you can afford it instead of buying the regular produce, you know, you need to make those choices. And we can all sit here and feel like we are victims, but every single choice that we make is part of this. So, you know, I know a lot of people are using, you know, I'll, I'll, I'm, I will name them because it, you know, in many ways this service is fantastic. You know, Function Health is great. You can get some affordable labs and you're gonna get, you know, a, a report that's spit out that's gonna give you some suggestions. Is that going to be the thing that helps you turn around a chronic illness? Probably not. You're going to need to work with a real human to help you peel back the layers. And I don't, as of yet, I don't know anybody, maybe they exist, and if you exist, let me know, where they have gone to a direct-to-consumer sort of generic company like this and actually had a full health Transformation as a result of that, because there's so many other components. It's just it's so much more nuanced than that. So I think that we need to be mindful and you know vote with our dollars. If you if you love your practitioners, go work with them. You know, right?

Because we don't want them to go away, right? We don't want to lose that functional unique perspective that's separate from the mainstream because let's face it, the mainstream. there is absolutely some advantages to it. There's absolutely, there's a necessity to most mainstream things, but to pretend that we all fit the mainstream narrative, that we all fit the mainstream results is just, it's denying our human uniqueness. And we cannot do that because, and you are perfect to speak to this because in many ways, your entire functional nutrition career is built around like, hey, the system's not working. Oh, they come to Margaret and then it works because she is going beyond just the, uh, the, the norm. She's looking at things in a, you know, testing you. She's looking at you personally. She's, she's looking at it from a true 100, you know, 360 functional perspective.

Well, and I always come back to this piece that it's not just about the information, it is about the relationship. Those clients that I had the most success with, like, yes, I was able to give them a different perspective and we moved on a different path than what they had moved with other practitioners, but it was also the relationship that we had. It was the fact that when things went sideways, which they did in every single one of those cases, there's not a single success story that I have where things at a certain point didn't go completely sideways and we were like, okay, Whoa, okay, whoa. We gotta troubleshoot and figure out what's going on here. It was the relationship, it was the back and forth, it was the accountability, it was the human-to-human connection that made so much of that possible. And I think that that's the piece that we risk losing, but I also think that because it's so essential, I think that we're right now in this moment of recalibration, we're all really excited about this shiny new toy that sort of has been handed to us and we're like, oh my gosh, what can it do? And it can do incredible things. But once the novelty has worn off and some of the repercussions of that, it can feel exciting to think like, oh, I could replace a person in my company with this AI agent. But is that exciting? Like, does that— is that really where you want to go? Is it really that you want to lay somebody off? So that an AI agent that you're going to spend as much, if not more, time monitoring and training and all of that kind of thing.

Right.

I mean, these are the choices that we get to make, is where is it important for us to really maintain the humanity of who we are and what we do, and where can we delegate to the machine? And I also want to say, I'm not down on AI. I'm not one of these people who is like, yeah, I refuse to use it. I use it. I use it extensively now, but I also hire a lot of humans, and I really believe in that human touch. And pretty much in everything I do, I am thinking, how can I make this more human? And we've experimented. We have, in fact, we've gone in certain directions where we've had AI write things, and I'm like, yeah, I don't like any of that. We're pulling it all back and having humans do it. I'm doing a lot of the writing myself because I I feel like I want, as, you know, as a representative of our company, I want to be speaking to that person who is reading it. I want to be the email in your inbox that is really worth opening and not just another piece of spam that you're clicking through and like tossing out of your promotions folder without another glance. So it's choices that every single one of us gets to make. And I think that things are gonna calm down in the next few years as we all get used to what this shiny new tool can use and kind of find its appropriate place in our work and our life.

I'm so glad we were able to have this conversation. I'm so glad you were available for the 100th episode. It's so wonderful to have you as the guest again, but specifically for this episode. I know that there are some things that people can do in their day-to-day life that are completely separate from AI, but yet serve that kind of thinking, critical thinking part of the brain. One is reading an actual book versus a Kindle or something like that, that the actual tangible holding a book and the way the 3D space is actually supportive towards your brain function. What are some other things? Because I know you do many of them.

Well, yes, anything that you can do that is physical and with other humans is so important. So reading a physical book, writing with a pen in your journal or on a piece of paper, writing out your thoughts, actually physically writing. There's a whole It's a whole different process when you use a physical pen and write on paper than it is when you're typing. Go and have a conversation with people. Talk about these issues, like what we're doing here today. Go and put away the phones and have dynamic, thought-provoking conversations. When we go out to dinner and see people sitting there at a table and half the people at the table are on their phones, it makes me want to cry. Look up. Look at each other, connect. If you are studying something, practice sharing about it with another person. Maybe you write it down and share it, or maybe you explain it. We do this, I'm working with a lot of practitioners and we're teaching them concepts, and I'm like, teach it to your cat, teach it to your kid, teach it to your partner, teach it to your best friend. Once you teach a thing, you really understand the thing. And so I think these muscles that are at risk of atrophying, we need to just be more proactive about exercising them on a regular basis because life used to just be such that you would exercise them by moving through your days. And now critical thinking, deep work, as Cal Newport talks about, writing, thought, this is now stuff that can be delegated really easily. And so if you don't create the space for it intentionally, you can inadvertently Atrophy those really important muscles.

Well, and you asked me what I hope the next 100 episodes look like, and honestly, that is the answer, is I hope that I and we as a society can maintain our uniqueness and honor our differences. I love difference. I actually enjoy contrast. For me, contrast is what informs me of my own position. Without contrast, I don't know What my decision is? I don't know what it is I want or don't want. So contrast is really important, and and to your point, talking to different people, not just reading memes or seeing memes or quick kind of troll comments on Instagram, but actually talking to people supports me in getting to know myself better. And so I that's what I hope for the next hundred episodes is that. That we don't get like homogenized milk, you know, and remove all the fat. Like to me, it's the fat that keeps us interesting. It's the different body shapes. It's the different colors. It's the different perspectives. That's what I want life to continue to flourish and even more so flourish beyond where it is today. So here's to the next 100 episodes. You know, you mentioned your practice, sorry, your school actually. Um, if anyone listened to this and wants to get more information on that, where should they go?

instituteofrestorativehealth.com is the best place to go. And we have some fantastic practitioners. If you're somebody who is looking for one, we have a whole find a practitioner database there. And if you are a clinician and looking to do deeper training, we would love to talk more with you about what that could look like.

I'm pretty blown away. 100 episodes. What an amazing ride though. I have to say, like I started this because I realized that, um, In many ways, I was not feeling connected to a lot of the people I wanted to have conversations with, that I had curiosities about things and how they connect to my modern life. And it was really just that curiosity and that drive to talk to people I just thought were so smart and interesting that spurred this on. And it, in many ways, it's become So much more.

Well, I'm curious, like what has changed for you if you think back to episode one host Chef James to episode one hundred host Chef James? Like how are you different? What have you learned? That's a lot of episodes, a lot of people to talk to, just a lot of experience doing this whole thing. What what's the ride taught you?

Well, I have to give a shout out to my producers Curtis and team. I mean, they they have really challenged me. It's sometimes. With gritted teeth on my end. They've really challenged me to kind of like more bottom line questions, to not repeat myself, to drive the messaging. I think when I first started, I was like, oh, I'm going to be like Joe Rogan and have 2.5-hour episodes. And the first time I did that, I think I had recorded maybe like 3 episodes before the producers listened to it. And once they heard it, they were like, Like, uh, your contract says 60-minute episodes. And I was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, how do I have these conversations in 60 minutes? And now it's even like, okay, let's try to get it to 35 minutes. So it's all about really, you know, getting to the, to the point, you know, bottom lining. And I don't know, I mean, on a certain level, it's like, I love, like, listening to people talk long form, but I even think, like, some of those, like the Dax Shepards, the Joe Rogans, like even they could maybe pull back a little bit on how long they sometimes get. But that's just my opinion. I know, like, for example, you love Armchair Experts, so you would probably take more rather than less. But let's face it, the reality is that people's time is limited. For every yes, as you would say, for every yes, there is a no. And so I'm just I gotta say, I'm mostly grateful that I've had some fantastic guests. We have more fantastic guests lined up. I'm grateful for the audience, the growing audience, the people that I run into at events who tell me, this is my favorite podcast. I mean, like, 'cause I don't get feedback otherwise. I mean, do you get a lot of feedback on your podcast?

It's funny, I always get it when I am teaching, which is funny 'cause the class that I teach, I'm gonna be teaching tomorrow night for our new folks in the Yeah. And that's always— I have these moments of like, does anyone ever listen to these? And I actually drop a couple of quotes that I got from incredible experts on our podcast, and then I see the chat light up with, oh my gosh, I love the podcast, I listen to it all the time. And I think, oh, okay, so we keep going. But yeah, it's not something where you— it's a little bit different even from social media. Like, you get more feedback, I feel like, immediately on social media than you do in podcasting. It's a little bit like you send these things out into the ether and hope that people are enjoying it, but it comes back, you know?

Totally, totally.

So if you're to look out to like the 200th episode, which I hope that I will be honored enough to be invited back to, to celebrate with you, what do you hope that you're celebrating when you get to the 200th episode?

Oh man, I think I almost have to answer that question by reflecting back on what I've learned, so not as a host, but what I've learned From the episodes, from the first 99 episodes, there's 2 things that have really stood out to me. One is that no matter who I talk to, it seems like the conversation always comes back to the kind of ancestral foundations, as I call them. Like, so sleep, movement, what you eat and drink, and then how you deal with stress. Those 4 qualities seem to dominate Our modern times, the necessity of them seems to dominate our modern times. So that's one thing I did not know was going to come from this. I would also say what's shifted for me is a better understanding of how important connection is. Of course, connecting with your wife or partner. Um, which I feel like, you know, we've talked about in previous podcast, uh, episodes, but like, you know, our relationship has transformed so much over the last 15 years we've been together. Isn't that incredible? But it's more than just your immediate home connection, which is obviously important, but it's also your connection to the outer world. Um, one, one piece that I feel very, well, not very disconnected, but I feel less connected to than when I was younger are my friends. You know, I feel like a lot of the hierarchy of how I spread my time is, you know, family first, the kids, being a father, right? Second, I would say is, you know, it's honestly, and this is me just being honest, and I think I'd be curious to see what you number this, but I would say career comes second, not because of your, the being a husband and, to you is not important, but that without the career, I can't support the family, right? So supporting the family is really important as to me. Then of course, being a husband, and then it's self-care. And sometimes those flip-flop a little bit. Sadly, self-care, I think, should be at the top of the list. But admittedly, one of my, you know, Areas of improvement is that sometimes I put the kids before my own self-care. But what's not on the list, as you noticed, is spending time with friends.

Yeah.

Thank you all for joining me on 99, now 100 episodes. Please continue to join us for the next 100 and the 100 after that, because I'm not going anywhere. So I hope you don't either. And as always, please stay curious.

I'm curious.

Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's eatpluck.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.